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Throughout this document, the author is trying to communicate that white privilege still has an "invincible" power that people don't recognize. I believe that in some cases white privilege still exists today. White privilege comes from the bias that black people are dangerous and back then were less capable of doing the things that white people could because of the idea that they were superior . Its a matter of whether you were born white that gives you a better chance in some situations black people face every day. For instance, there is an idea, like previously mentioned, that black people are a threat and today black people are arrested more often then white people, and there are stories about black people being shot by a police officer, when they don't even have the reason to be shot. This article relates to "Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies.", because in that video this man spoke about why he attends KKK rallies. He describes a situation about how when he was younger and he was the only black cup scout in a crowd of other scouts, girls too. There was a group of white spectators on the side of the street watching the march that were throwing bottles, and anything they could find at him, just because he was black, and they didn't have any other reason besides the fact that he was black to be doing that. This relates that the people were acting out of a stereotype or generalization that black people were considered less important than white people and were deserving of these threatening forces.

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Recognizing white privilege begins with truly understanding the term itself.

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(TED talk)
The author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi explains how the judgments of people are made after everything we say. Or how one thought or  rumor about someone can give you a different perspective of who they are. I think that this video relates to "Black Woman Steps Up to the Mic", because in that video a woman expresses what it is like to be judged before someone has even met you. This relates to how the assumptions are made about people, but specifically how assumptions are made about black people just because of the past of black lives. I think that because of the violence in our world, people decide to target those who easily fit the stereotypical title, and that would be a black person. I wish that our world wasn't as corrupt as it is, and that people were given a chance to be seen for who they are, not what they are.

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Please [contact us](https://www.ted.com/contact) and let us know what happened.

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Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies

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Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies

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This video is about a man, who is black, and is not afraid to stand against racism. I think I would be too scared to stand up to  the KKK myself if it jeopardized my life. The cool thing about this speaker, named Daryl Davis, is that he doesn't go to the rallies to upset the KKK or hating people, but he goes to get an answer of why they have hate for him in the first place. He wants to find a reason they hate him without even meeting him. Black race doesn't represent a whole group of people, what represents those people is their individuality. I think this relates to "Killed by the cops" because all of the people that were unjustly fired at didn't even have a chance to show the officers who they really were, or if they even had an ounce of negativity in them. Whether the dead people were bad or good, they still were never seen for who they really were, they were seen for who they were thought to be.

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Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies. | Daryl Davis | TEDxNaperville

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Black Woman Steps Up to the Mic by Sha Condria Sibley (video)

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Black Woman Steps Up to the Mic by Sha Condria Sibley (video)

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During her poetic speech, a black woman expresses what it is like to be a black person like her, and what it is like to have a family when you're black. In the past, and still today, black people are mistreated all over the world. During the speech in "Black Woman Steps Up to the Mic"  she says "you will see her before you ever decide to hear her", which is saying that white people will judge her, a black person, before they get to know her. This connects to "What is White Privilege Really?". In this article the privilege of being a white person is explained, and how white people are the ones who don't have the encumber of being judged by the color of their skin. These two are similar because the woman giving her speech explains the life she has to live because of the color she was born with, but in white privilege you don't have the burden.

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Women of the World Poetry Slam 2016 - iCon "Black Woman Steps Up to Mic"

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Blackface is from the early 19th century, and it was considered very disrespectful towards black people. I think that if we are white then we have the duty of being educated about the history of blacks so that when we do something on the line of offense, we take into consideration the history before our actions so that people are less likely to be offended. People get so sensitive and when something offends them, no matter the intention of the offender, the whole country finds out by the end of the day. Technology communicates so fast and its crucial that people are aware of the actions that can upset a group of people.  For example, in the video there was a picture of two white women that had brown face masks on, and it was posted on Facebook, and now it's being shown on this show that's speaking about an issue. It bothers me that some people are unaware of what they are doing, because without thinking they can hurt their own reputation and hurt the lives of others.

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Blackface: A cultural history of a racist art form

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After the Civil war free black people ate, produced, and sold watermelon. They made watermelon a symbol of their freedom, in doing so there are jokes and stereotypes said today. In pop culture, many people think once they have learned something, that they can use that knowledge to create a stereotype for a good laugh. There is a stereotype going around that all black people like watermelon, which isn't true. I think this relates to "Their Eyes Were Watching God" because Janie's grandmother assumed that every black woman should have men do all of the work in the house, when her grandmother never considered the possibility that Janie would be okay with helping out. These connect because critics don't actually know that all black people like watermelon, they just assume it, and Janie's grandmother didn't know that Janie didn't want to live the life of a white woman, she just assumed it.

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A 1909 postcard, with the caption "I'se so happy!"

The watermelon stereotype is an anti-black racist trope originating in the Southern United States. It first arose as a backlash against African-American emancipation and economic sufficiency in the late 1860s.

After the American Civil War, in several areas of the south, former-slaves grew watermelon on their own land as a cash-crop to sell. Thus, for African-Americans, watermelons were a symbol of liberation and self-reliance, while for many in the majority white culture they embodied a loss, and threatened loss, of dominance. Southern-white resentment against African Americans led to a politically potent cultural caricature, using the watermelon to disparage African Americans as sloppy, childish, lazy, and publicly embarrassing.

The first known image associating black people with watermelons.[2]

The first published caricature of Black people reveling in watermelon is believed to have appeared in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in 1869. The stereotype emerged shortly after enslaved people were emancipated after the Civil War. Defenders of slavery used it to portray African Americans as a simple-minded people who were happy when provided with watermelon and a little rest. The slaves' enjoyment of watermelon was also seen by the Southern people as a sign of their own supposed benevolence. The stereotype was perpetuated in minstrel shows often depicting African Americans as ignorant and lazy, given to song and dance and inordinately fond of watermelon.

The link between African-Americans and watermelons may have been promoted in part by African-American minstrels who sang popular songs such as "The Watermelon Song" and "Oh, Dat Watermelon" in their shows, and which were set down in print in the 1870s. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago planned to include a "Colored People's Day" featuring African American entertainers and free watermelons for the African-American visitors whom the exposition's organizers hoped to attract. It was a flop, as the city's African-American community boycotted the exposition, along with many of the performers booked to attend on Colored People's Day.

Pickaninny caricature from the early 1900s. The postcard shows a picture of a black boy eating a watermelon, with a stereotypical poem underneath.

Early-1900s postcards often depicted African-Americans as animalistic creatures "happy to do nothing but eat watermelon" - a bid to dehumanize them. Other such "Coon cards", as they were popularly known, depicted African-Americans stealing, fighting over, and becoming watermelons. One poem from the early 1900s (pictured right) reads:

George Washington Watermelon Columbus Brown
I'se black as any little coon in town
At eating melon I can put a pig to shame
For Watermelon am my middle name

For several decades in the late nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth century, the stereotype was promoted through caricatures in print, film, sculpture and music, and was a common decorative theme on household goods.

At the end of the 19th century, there was a brief genre of "watermelon pictures" - cinematic caricatures of African-American life showing such supposedly typical pursuits as eating watermelons, cakewalking and stealing chickens, with titles such as The Watermelon Contest (1896), Dancing Darkies (1896), Watermelon Feast (1896), and Who Said Watermelon? (1900, 1902). The African-American characters in such features were initially played by Black performers, but from about 1903 onwards, they were replaced by white actors performing in blackface.

Several of the films depicted African-Americans as having a virtually uncontrollable appetite for watermelons; for instance, The Watermelon Contest and Watermelon Feast include scenes of African-American men consuming the fruits at such a speed that they spew out mush and seeds. The author Novotny Lawrence suggests that such scenes had a subtext of representing Black male sexuality, in which Black men "love and desire the fruit in the same manner that they love sex ... In short, black males have a watermelon 'appetite' and are always trying to see 'who can eat the most' with the strength of this 'appetite' depicted by black males uncontrollably devouring watermelon."

African-American minstrels sang popular songs such as "The Watermelon Song" and "Oh, Dat Watermelon" in their shows, recorded in print in the 1870s.

In March 1916, Harry C. Browne recorded a song titled "Nigger Love a Watermelon Ha!, Ha! Ha!", set to the tune of the popular folk song " Turkey in the Straw". Such songs were popular during that period and many made use of the watermelon stereotype. The script for Gone with the Wind (1939) contained a scene in which Scarlett O'Hara's slave Prissy, played by Butterfly McQueen, eats watermelon, which the actress refused to perform. Use of this stereotype started to die down around the 1950s, and had mostly vanished by 1970, although its continued power as a stereotype could still be recognized in films such as Watermelon Man (1970), The Watermelon Woman (1996), and Bamboozled (2001). Watermelons also provided a theme for many racial jokes in the 2000s.

In 2002, British journalist (and later prime minister) Boris Johnson alluded to "piccaninies" with "watermelon smiles" in a Telegraph article about then-prime minister Tony Blair visiting West Africa, a description widely criticised as racist and out of touch.

Protesters against African-Americans frequently hold up watermelons, among other things; imagery of Barack Obama consuming watermelon was subject of viral emails circulated by political opponents during the 2008 Obama presidential campaign. After his election to the US presidency, watermelon-themed imagery of Obama continued to be created and endorsed. In February 2009, Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose resigned (albeit temporarily) after forwarding to the White House an email displaying a picture of the White House lawn planted with watermelons. Grose said that he was not aware of the watermelon stereotype. Other controversies included a statue of Obama holding a watermelon in Kentucky in 2012 and a 2014 editorial cartoon in the Boston Herald asking if Obama has tried watermelon-flavored toothpaste.

At the National Book Awards ceremony in November 2014, author Daniel Handler made a controversial remark after author Jacqueline Woodson was presented with an award for young people's literature. Woodson, who is Black, won the award for Brown Girl Dreaming. During the ceremony, Handler noted that Woodson is allergic to watermelon, a reference to the racist stereotype. His comments were immediately criticized; Handler apologized via Twitter and donated $10,000 to We Need Diverse Books, and promised to match donations up to $100,000. In a New York Times op-ed published shortly thereafter, "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke", Jacqueline Woodson explained that "in making light of that deep and troubled history" with his joke, Daniel Handler had come from a place of ignorance, but underscored the need for her mission to "give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past".

On January 7, 2016, Australian cartoonist Chris Roy Taylor published a cartoon of Jamaican cricketer Chris Gayle with a whole watermelon in his mouth. Gayle had been in the news for making controversial suggestive comments towards a female interviewer during a live broadcast. The cartoon depicted a Cricket Australia official asking a boy if he could "borrow" the watermelon, so Gayle would be unable to speak. A couple of days earlier, a video of a boy eating a whole watermelon - rind and all - in the stands of a cricket match had gone viral. Taylor said he was unaware of the stereotype, and the cartoon was removed.

In " Safety Training", an episode of the American television series Michael Scott ( Steve Carell) throws a watermelon off the roof of the office onto a trampoline. After it bounces and hits a car, Michael fears that the car belongs to Stanley Hudson ( Leslie David Baker), who is African-American, and that Stanley will think he is racist; Michael tells Dwight Schrute ( Rainn Wilson), "Deactivate the car alarm, clean up the mess, find out whose car that is. If it's Stanley's, call the offices of James P. Albini. See if he handles hate crimes."

On October 22, 2017, the Fox & Friends morning show on the Fox News Channel dressed a Hispanic boy,[failed verification ] who was mistaken by many as an African-American, in a watermelon Halloween costume, drawing ire on social media.

In 2019, the video game Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled featured an alternative skin for the character of Tawna, named "Watermelon Tawna". The skin has darker fur and darker hair and wears a watermelon-themed T-shirt. Shortly after the skin was introduced, and after some social media discussion of the issue, a patch was issued that renamed the skin "Summertime Tawna".

In 2021, the television comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm season 11 episode "The Watermelon" features Larry David ( Larry David) helping his friend Leon Black ( J. B. Smoove) to overcome his embarrassment of eating watermelon. Larry takes Leon shopping to purchase a watermelon. At the checkout Larry announces to the store: "It's not a crime for a black man to like watermelon".

Pilgrim, David. Watermelons, Nooses, and Straight Razors: Stories from the Jim Crow Museum. PM Press. Oct 9, 2017.

Black, William R. How Watermelons Became Black. Journal of the Civil War Era Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 64-86 (23 pages). University of North Carolina Press. March 2018.

Popular and Pervasive Stereotypes of African Americans. . Oct. 23, 2018.

How Watermelon's Reputation Got Tangled In Racism. University of Maryland. Aug 2, 2019

Greenlee, Cynthia. On eating watermelon in front of white people: "I'm not as free as I thought". VOX. Aug 29, 2019.

Sousa, Emily and Manish Raizada. Contributions of African Crops to American Culture and Beyond: The Slave Trade and Other Journeys of Resilient Peoples and Crops. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. July 23, 2020.

Maynard, David and Donald. The Cambridge World History of Food - Cucumbers, Melons, and Watermelons. Cambridge University Press. 2000.

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The watermelon stereotype is an anti-black racist trope originating in the Southern United States. It first arose as a backlash against African-American emancipation and economic sufficiency in the late 1860s. After the American Civil War, in several areas of the south, former-slaves grew watermelon on their own land as a cash-crop to sell.

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Alex Dang- "What Kind of Asian Are You?"

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Alex Dang- "What Kind of Asian Are You?"

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This video is about stereotypes and how one Asian, Alex Dang, was asked what kind of Asian he was, this meaning that there is a category: Smart, a good cook, etc. This shows how one rumor or idea passes on to the next and how people just assume that a single person has anything to do with the way they have been labeled. It happens so often today that people listen to these ideas and stereotypes, that there are many different examples of this situation happening. This relates to the "Watermelon Stereotype" because like black people having the assumption that they like watermelon, Asians are assumed to be smart or like the food that their culture originated. Both are an ethnicity that has been velcroed to a list of things that "must" be a part of the person.

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This article is about many Asians who were stereotyped in our community. Dr. Beheruz Sethna, President. University of West Georgia, tells a story about how one time she was at a football game, and a person was confused that she wore blue jeans too. This shows that people make assumptions off of people based on their ethnicity. I think that this relates to "Their Eyes Were Watching God" because when Janie was with Tea Cake the society judged her because they didn't think it was okay for her to fish, or learn to shoot because it wasn't the 'norm' for women to do those kinds of activities. The two relate because a person thought that Sethna didn't wear blue jeans just because she was Asian, and Janie's society thought that she shouldn't fish, or shoot because she was a woman.

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Childish Gambino "This Is America" lyric s explained

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Childish Gambino "This Is America" lyric s explained

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In a song "This Is America" an artist, Childish Gambino, displays the real meaning of what America is. His song shows gun violence coming out of nowhere, which shows that in America gun violence happens when you least expect it. He also shows what it is like living as a black person in America and how dangerous it is nowadays. There were 17 school shootings last year, and there have been 288 since 2009. Countries that give gun control to the government have the lowest number of deaths per year. I think that if we gave gun power to only the government there would be less deaths in even police situations with black people. I think people would have a stronger faith in police doing their jobs correctly if that happened. I think this relates to "Killed by the cops", because there wouldn't be this issue of bias police corruption if gun violence never happened anymore.

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Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” Lyrics Explained | Genius News

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This article is how police injustice happens all over the world, and targets black people. There is a stereotype that black people are dangerous and threatening. Why the cops kill more black people without reason than whites can not be statistically proven by the departments that have officers committing these acts. Hearing about these stories causes the rest of the world to then assume that all police officers are corrupt. I think it is upsetting when I hear stories about a police officer killing a black person, when they didn't have any evidence or reason to do so. When stories like these go viral, everyone has already made their opinion on it, and future arrests are contemplated, and it messes up the whole system/purpose of men and woman patrolling around for our safety, when black peoples lives are in jeopardy when they step outside in their racial profiling communities. I think that this relates to "The Power of a Single Story", because one thought or opinion can change someones life, depending on who is in control, and in this situation it is an officers racial opinion that has left the voice of those who were killed a mystery to the crime.